Monday, May 17, 2010

The Connecticut Situation

If Richard Blumenthal has to be replaced as the Democratic Senate nominee in Connecticut the party should still be favored to keep the seat as long as it gets a functional candidate.

In early January we polled Congressman Chris Murphy against Rob Simmons and Linda McMahon and he led each of them by seven points. Almost half of the voters in the state said they had no opinion of Murphy personally so he functioned basically as a generic Democratic candidate. If the nominee ends up being someone of comparable quality- or Murphy himself- the party will continue to be favored in the race although certainly not by the stratospheric kind of numbers that Blumenthal was.

And of course Blumenthal may be able to weather this- it's always hard to tell with these things.

Democrats would be idiots to try and get Chris Murphy into this race. Chris Murphy was a wash in from the 2006 Democratic wave. Also, Democrats would probably lose his seat without him there when they cant afford to keep giving away House seats.

It's nice to see that Dems are upset about this. It's not of the level of John Edwards but it's a similar situation.Why didn't he come clean about this years ago? Can we make a deal? We promise to never nominate John Ensign or Mark Sanford for any office again.

What's worse is that his campaign has called the Times story "an outrageous distortion" and touts his six months of service in the Marine Corps Reserves.

Bush and Cheney were roasted for their lack of service, but at least they didn't say they did. I bet Blumenthal has better stories than Rob Simmons, a guy who has actually getting shot at by the enemy.

Serious question, Tom: assuming Blumenthal drops (and he's going to see his numbers drop like a stone among McCain voters if he doesn't), do you think that the spillover would affect other Dem candidates?